


Snow Drifts

by Swashbuckler



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), The Flash (Comics)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Coats, Comfort, F/M, Gen, Light Angst, Melancholy, Not Really Character Death, Sharing Clothes, Year of the Villain: Rogues' Reign
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:07:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28391409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swashbuckler/pseuds/Swashbuckler
Summary: Even in the cold and the quiet, there are still warm moments, and tiny flickers of hope.Set between The Flash #81-82, here is a little look at the beginning of the Year of the Villain: Rogues' Reign arc, before the Flash returns to Central City.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	Snow Drifts

**Author's Note:**

> This is set between The Flash #81-82/the beginning of the Year of the Villain 'Rogues' Reign' arc, where the Rogues have been powered up and have divided Central City into their territories. 
> 
> It is a little mournful and subdued for it. Still, it does have some softer notes.

The snow and ice that Captain Cold - now crowned King - had rained down on the city had turned the world white and silent. Occasionally there would be a whisper, the echo of shots and shouting in the distance mingled with the fresh snow. The sound never lasted as long as the snowfall. 

There was nothing left in the city but snow, and ghosts.

Amongst the ice graveyard, the ghosts moved. The ghosts of the city that once was, not so long ago: civilians braving the ice, to barren results and the ghosts of the insurgents, of those hunted by Cold and his agents and his so-called High Guard, with their days and chances and luck and how far each could get them weighing heavy on their minds. 

Then there was the ghost that haunted them all. 

The news of the Flash's disappearance had spread with the snow, a fast and unforgiving avalanche that swept the city at 'King' Cold's command. The city had fallen faster with the inevitable despair creeping in with the cold.

Kid Flash and the Flash of China, locked off from their speed, their mentor lost, had taken their fear and their spite and their dared flicker of hope with them around the city, leaving behind their shared insignia, scrawling it on the walls of the subway tunnels, the deserted mall, and STAR Labs, a defiant beacon to the city and a call to the Flash, a hope and plea and a summons all in one. _Don't be dead. Please, don't be dead._

Commander Cold had looked out at the frozen wasteland that was once Central City, and could only offer them a quiet apology. _There's no record of this in the future,_ he had said. _This shouldn't be happening._ It had offered a tiny comfort - _things don't stay this way, they don't end this way._ Nevertheless, the uncertainty, and the continued absence of Flash, continued to haunt them all, especially the Commander. 

He was living in his uniform, needed to keep out the cold he was at least a fraction more suited to than the rest of their group, but also from a far greater necessity: Commander Cold, far from home, frozen out of his own time, alone in the past without his team, and now without the partner he'd grown to trust, to call an ally and a friend, had lost so much he only had his uniform left.

He carried so many ghosts with him.

Still, his is fervent commitment to the city, to protecting whatever remnant he could preserve, never wavered. He accompanied the two young speedsters out into the city, refusing to leave them vulnerable to attack, worked out safe supply routes to provide aid to isolated civilians assisted by Detectives Burns and Morrow, and shepherded messages to David Singh's faction of insurgents, hidden away from danger on the other side of the frozen wasteland.

 _You know,_ Detective Burns had said to him after a narrow escape from Snart's agents, _just once I'd like this city to be boring._

That had made him laugh, just a little. It was a stark difference to the quiet melancholy that he had settled into, that he - like she - had been tempering with an aggressive focus on their duty. Encouraged, Allison had bumped his arm and asked with a lighthearted, yet not insincere enquiry if there was room in his coat for one more. 

He had tugged his coat open; an immediate invitation. One she didn't hesitate to accept. 

The fur trim of his collar had tickled her ears as Henry folded her into the warm with him. She had wrapped her arms snugly around him, hoping to offer some semblance of the blissful warmth he was sharing with her. He had buried his nose in her hair with a quiet sigh, and they had stayed there, together, for longer that they would've thought they would allow themselves.

 _Your nose is cold,_ she had told him eventually, face pressed into the warmth of his shoulder.

 _Yeah,_ he agreed. _Yours is too._ He rubbed his thumb against the thick blue fabric of his coat covering Allison's shoulder. _Not really ice cream weather this time, is it?_

And she had laughed too. Just a little.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this turned out way more melancholy that I originally intended, whoops. Would you believe this is the result of me wanting to find a solid context for ColdBurns coat sharing? 
> 
> (Rafa Sandoval and Howard Porter and their respective colourists make Commander Cold's coat look so very luxuriously fluffy and soft, how could I not?)


End file.
